


Seven Thousand Days

by Bitsy



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Furiosa backstory, Gen, Immortan Joe - Freeform, Is a total ass, Non-Comics Compliant, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-14
Updated: 2015-09-14
Packaged: 2018-04-20 17:54:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4796780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bitsy/pseuds/Bitsy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She rounded down, honestly. Seven thousand days sounded slightly better than seven thousand, two hundred and ten. 7,210. 7,210. It was branded on her very soul, those four digits. A lot could happen in 7,210 days.</p>
<p>A lot could happen, and often did.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seven Thousand Days

She rounded down, honestly. Seven thousand days sounded slightly better than seven thousand, two hundred and ten. 7,210. _7,210._ It was branded on her very soul, those four digits. A lot could happen in 7,210 days.

A lot could happen, and often did.

***

Her name wasn’t always Furiosa. Her name had been Clear. _Clear_ , daughter of many, born to be a nurturer. Born to make the green place thrive, to make the life of the afterlife somewhat more comfortable.

And yet, within the bounds of her green and growing world, the child that was Clear was also impatient.

“Why can’t we have bread tonight?”

“Because the wheat is not ready yet, child. It must grow further. It must outgrow the amaranth and the corn and the potatoes.”

“I’m tired of amaranth mash.”

“Too bad.”

That was the first lesson. The impatience of youth could not defeat the long rhythms of nature, as stunted and poisoned as it was. The demands of the now had to bow to the inevitability of tomorrow. And the inevitability of tomorrow…wasn’t. No creature on this globe could rely on tomorrow. Because the world was well and truly dead. The many mothers tried so hard, so damn hard, to pull together every single legend of agriculture they could. And they mostly succeeded.

Not that Clear noticed. She took it for granted, what the green place was.

That was why she lost it.

***

Impatience was a deadly vice, in the green place, where life balanced on the edge of a knife. Clear started loud fights, first with her voice, and then with her bony fists. Fighting the other girls who were much more tractable, much more in tune with the rhythms of the sun and moon. Clear grew up straight and tall and lovely, her form unmarked and untwisted by blight and radiation. Her genes were strong, strong and loud, making this child the most comely of the lot. Comely and aggressive, demanding her way in all ways. Golden hair curled at her shoulders, green eyes sparked with preternatural intelligence. Clear lived up to her name, and she saw so much. Even as she picked unnecessary fights.

At the age of eight, Clear had been given a nickname. “Furious.” And then it morphed. Morphed into Furiosa. The temper on the child totally warped all other perceptions of her, and she was all too willing to live up to her reputation.

And then, the Citadel came calling. Or rather, the first trade was approached.

The Many Mothers had one big problem. Their water was subtly tainted. And the water of the Citadel came from deep underground, a spring that was miraculously unpolluted. A never-ending spring of life-giving water. That one man and his army sat on with unbreakable power.

Immortan Joe wasn’t a fool. He had been merciless, ruthless, and shrewd, where others had faltered. Including the Many Mothers, so long a political power, so long in charge of green growing things. They’d been a major player in the end of the world. Guzzoline. Water. Food. Bullets. Medicine. Each major state had its own monopoly, guaranteeing that the others wouldn’t attack.

And then the Many Mothers lost their water source, and the food started to die. So the balance of power shifted.

***

Furisoa was intended to be the first wife. At the age of eleven. The Mothers had no other choice, nothing else to barter with than their own bodies and the bodies of their daughters. They wailed and mourned. They told Furiosa that she could return, whenever she wanted, but for now….for now…it was done. Sacrifice yourself, to save the rest of us, and we’ll make damn sure you have a home to come back to. Save us, Furiosa. Save the many. We beg you.

And so the thin and brittle bones of an eleven year old girl had marched chin first into the Citadel. Offering her very self as coin, so the Many could have water.

There was only one problem; at the age of eleven, Clear hadn’t started her courses yet. And the Immortan was impatient.

So he set the girl child to work in the factories, enamored by her obvious beauty. She learned how to maintain the rigs, the cars, the engines. She learned carburetors as she’d once learned the growing seasons, she learned how an internal combustion engine worked, how to tune up a transmission. Fuel injection systems became her veins, braking became her bones. She learned Ford, and Chevy, and Cadillac, and Pontiac. She learned the V-8, as all the Citadel did, lacing her fingers together in its image. She pulled her golden hair back in a ponytail, and then shaved it off entirely. Purely for practical purposes. It didn’t detract from her hollow beauty.

A year passed. Twelve. Then another. Thirteen. There was a woman who was assigned to watch her, inspect her clothes for the evidence of her womanhood. Fourteen. Fifteen. It didn’t come. No cramps, no blood. Nothing. She grew. She grew tall and strong, her short hair remaining such. She was seventeen years old, and her menses hadn’t started. And the Immortan raged. Oh, gods, did he rage. And yet not once did Furiosa begin her period.

When she reached eighteen, that was when she had her accident.

The beauty of the world, the Furious one, the glorious goddess of the Citadel, was trusted to fix every engine in the Immortan’s fleet. And when the shell of the Charger fell off its prop and landed on her arm, almost slicing it off, the mourning was heard all the way to Bullet Town.

She was delirious with fever, as the infection set into the bone of her left arm. The half-life War Boys were screaming her name, calling to witness her ascent into Valhalla. She had no time for that bullshit, frankly. And as Organic Mechanic bent over her sickbed, she grabbed his collar in her one remaining hand, and hauled him close, her breath on his face.

“Cauterize it. Fix it. Now.”

So he cauterized it. He fixed it. Right then.

She woke up three weeks later with an arm that had been amputated just below the elbow, and a uterus that still refused to cycle like a normal woman’s.

And the Immortan thankfully gave up on her. It had been seven years, after all, and the Mothers had sent other girls to the Immortan’s side. Furiosa never had to flock to Joe’s bed, thank all the gods. If they were even listening.

So he made her an Imperator.

For some reason, the Immortan had a serious soft spot when it came to women. Oh, sure, he’d rape them whenever he was feeling the need to improve the genetic lines of the future. And yet, he was also the only leader of the land who would give a woman the figurative keys to the gates. Furiosa was an Imperator. She was given command of a phalanx of War Boys, given the War Rig and its start up systems as a privilege. She was handed a freedom that nobody else in the Citadel had. And that made her incredibly nervous, in a way. She was still Furiosa. She still knew the inevitability of nature. She knew that the Immortan was watching her, as he watched all of his property. For some reason, he equated her infertility as loyalty. And that baffled her.

Twenty-one. Twenty-five. Twenty-seven.

Maybe he wasn’t wrong. She kept driving his rig. Kept taking water to Bullet Town, and Guzzoline Town. Kept hauling proper supplies back to her Immortan, even when her gaze flicked to the East. How had the Many never tried to contact her? How had they forgotten her? How was it that the Citadel did without the green growing stuff that the Vuvalini nurtured?

She had been counting the days since she was eleven years old.

Seven thousand, two hundred and ten days.

Imperator Furiosa was thirty one years old, and not sure who she was anymore. She had been a creature of water for so long, it was impossible to remember her past in the green place. There were many Wives now. Grown from the genetic stock of the Citadel, of course. Born from Bullet Town. Guzzoline Town. The beautiful women of the world, the last pure genetic stock of the dregs of humanity, sent to the Immortan in exchange for water.

Until finally, the world ended, and the splendid one asked her assistance…


End file.
